Woman's IVF treatment reveals devastating diagnosis: 'This isn't about getting pregnant, it's whether I'll survive'

Kate Stephens was just 31 when she had married the love of her life, hoped to start and family ¡ª and had her world shaken by cancer after an overdue check-up ended in a devastating diagnosis.

"If I had heard someone tell me what I was about to go through three years ago I would've been in a very different boat," Stephens tells 9Honey.

In 2019, the police officer, who lives in Moree with her wife Crystal, had travelled to Brisbane in hopes of beginning IVF treatment.

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"A year into marriage my wife and I started the IVF process ¡ª I wanted to wait and travel a bit more, but my wife said we should do it now," she explains.

The pair were given pap smear tests prior to the process, and within minutes, Stephens was told there was something in her cervix that "shouldn't be there".

"Two weeks later, we were told I have cancer," she shares.

"We had all these life plans and then cancer was like, you're going to do things in the way you expected."

The "surreal moment", Stephens says, may have been a threat to her health, but the police officer, who had always hoped to carry a child, put her fertility as a priority.

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"My doctor looked at me and said this isn't about whether you can get pregnant, it's about whether you'll survive," she reveals.

"It was a lot more serious than I thought."

Diagnosed with stage one cervical cancer, Stephens endured two gruelling surgeries to remove the cancerous cells, with a hope that she would still be able to carry a baby if none of her lymph nodes returned with negative results.

"You're in a dark and scary place because you have all of these questions and no answers," she shares.

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"But then one of my cells came back with 1.5 mm of cancer, and it meant I had no choice but to do treatment that would make me infertile.

"It completely turned everything upside down."

Stephens was told she would have to complete six weekly treatments of chemotherapy and 28 daily treatments of radiotherapy to beat her diagnosis ¡ª yet she maintained she still wanted a chance to try IVF, against her doctor's wishes.

Injecting herself with hormones right before she began life-saving treatment, the hopeful mother managed to secure one egg that could potentially be the couple's "miracle" child.

Finishing her rigorous treatment in August, 2019, Stephens says she "walked out of that hospital ward a shell of a human being."

That was, until she discovered the news that her single egg had managed to successfully conceive a pregnancy months after her final treatment.

Born right in the middle of the pandemic in August last year, the couple now share an 11-month-old daughter.

"We got a miracle baby out of it all," Stephens recalls, noting six midwives and the entire rural town of Moree were "cheering" for the couple after their ordeal.

"We look at her every day and say how are you here? It's unbelievable," she shares.

"My stubbornness was good for something, but if I used that for my cervical training, I'd be in a very different place right now."

During the pandemic year, pap smear screenings took a nose-dive with more than 35,000 people not turning up for their annual appointment in comparison to 2019's data, according to Pathology Awareness Australia.

People in the LGBTQIA+ community were considered 'most at risk' of developing HPV, a condition that presents in 93 per cent of all cervical cancer cases, due to misunderstandings about transmission of the virus in same-sex couples.

Reflecting on her experience, Stephens says she's "now that woman who goes to a supermarket and tells them to get a pap smear."

"What is way more uncomfortable than a pap smear is cancer, getting your cervix removed, getting your pelvis radiated," she shares.

Enduring the "flow on" effects of post-cancer life, including medically induced menopause and the impact of chemo and radiotherapy, Stephens says her experience "forced me to come to terms with the fact that I might not always have your health."

Now, she gives out "pap claps" on social media to celebrate others getting regular, life-saving pap smears.

"We put it off because maybe we're worried what may be discovered - but worse case scenario if something is found, the more options and better outcomes you have," she explains.

"If we made looking after our health something to celebrate, we wouldn't feel so uncomfortable."

In 2017, the 'pap smear' changed to the Cervical Screening Test, for a new and improved test that detects for HPV and only has to be taken every five years.

For more information on the new test click here.